Arkansas Police Use Taser on 10-Year-Old Girl

This is a discussion on Arkansas Police Use Taser on 10-Year-Old Girl within the In the News: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly forums, part of the The Back Porch category; Originally Posted by Sticks
I'm gonna get flamed for this and I don't care.
I am child free by choice. First and foremost I can't ...

I am child free by choice. First and foremost I can't stand kids, second because society has removed the parents right/duty/ability to apply pain reinforced discipline (it is well documented and proven to be an effective training tool).

Now I was also beaten regularly as a child growing up, and I turned out OK. Never got a whippin' I did not earn.

Many a time when I am out in public (shopping, dining) I have so wanted a taser to zap some problem child throwing a tantrum or being feral (while the parent is clearly oblivious to the activities).

I say a HUGE +1 to the officer.

I wont flame you at all. I will actually commend you for not having kids you dont want or are not prepared to handle. Seems like a foreign idea these days. (personal responsibility)

I respect the decision to not have kids, but I don't understand it. For me it's a no brainer, take the good with the bad, and possibly pass on the right ideas and values to the next generation. OTOH I had to wait til I was 32 to get started, after I finally found the right gal. Until that point I had come to realize there was a possibility that I would end up childless. Now I have 2 boys and the wife is threatening me with trying for a girl. At age 42 that is a frightening prospect!

FBI probe use of stun gun on girl
By: Associated Press - Texarkana Gazette - Published: 11/21/2009
LITTLE ROCK—FBI agents are investigating why a police officer in a small Arkansas town used a stun gun on a 10-year-old girl who refused to take a shower, city officials said Friday.

Ozark Mayor Vernon McDaniel told The Associated Press that FBI agents arrived Thursday night in his western Arkansas town. McDaniel said officials in the city of 3,500 would cooperate fully with investigators.

“I and the police chief welcome the FBI taking control of the investigation,” McDaniel said. “Whatever they ask for, we will provide it.”

Town officials said it was unclear whether the FBI stepped in of its own accord or whether the Justice Department asked it to do so. The FBI is the lead agency on claims of federal civil rights abuses.

A spokeswoman at the FBI’s Little Rock field office did not immediately return a call for comment Friday.

Bradshaw’s report said he went to the Ozark home Nov. 11 after receiving a call about a domestic disturbance. When he arrived, the girl was curled up on the floor, screaming.

The child screamed, kicked and resisted whenever her mother tried to get her in the shower before bed, the report said. The girl’s mother “told me to tase her if I needed to,” Bradshow wrote.

Bradshaw said he gave the girl “a very brief drive stun to her back” after she kicked him in the groin.

The names of the girl and her mother were edited from the report. McDaniel said the girl is now at the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter in Cecil.

I worked in an E.R. for a year that facilitated 5 psych units. I worked in an alternative junior high for a year as a teacher and then in a group home. In one of our group homes we have ages 10 to 14 and in the other we have 15 to 18. If the parent is anything like every single parent of our group home kids or half of the alternative school kids then trust me she is only a parent in title.

Behavior like this is usually the life long product of continuous neglect, verbal, physical, emotional and sexual abuse. I have read several posts that say "That 10 year old just needed a good spanking". If the family is similar to the families we deal with then you be surprised at how the spanking would affect the child. A spanking is nothing to them by this point. They go threw worse than that on a regular basis. These kids live in homes where the mother beats them, comes home drunk regularly, scream ragingly at them on a regular basis, shoves them off on their friends or extended families who dont want to take care of the kid either. These kids oftem live in filth, with barly any food in the house. There utilities get shut off often. The kids often go to school with no sleep because the cops were at their house all night because the current boyfriend beat up the mother. These kids get locked in a room all day at age 4 while the mother is gone.

I can not say that this family has these issues but this situation sounds exactly like what my clients go threw regularly. It is tear jerking to read through our clients histories. They are pretty messed up. Almost as messed up as their "parents". Most of them will go on to have kids and abuse and neglect them the same way they were abused and neglected.

To our kids a spanking is a complete joke. A huge scary guy screaming in their face is a joke. They have been beaten badly enough and often enough that a spanking is a non issue for them. You cant threaten them into behaving. I am a pretty good parent and I have a decent effect on them but it in no way I can reverse their lifetime of dysfunction. When 1 of out clients lose it they really lose it! They become a very real danger to themselves an others. 1-2-3 or 4 staff will physically restrain the child while the on duty nurse gives something similar to a B-52 and then the child is placed in a safe, locked room 5X10X6. Most of our clients a semipermanent residents because they are on continuous suicide precautions.

We would get kids in the E.R. all the time that were in a state of physical rage. They were a danger to themselves and others. 3 officers would carry 1 10 year old in. By the end of the process things would often escalate and the kid would be medicated and strapped to a bed in leathers. Then the parent(s) would come in and talk to staff and lemme tell you,,,,,, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree! I have had parents bring their kids in because when the parent goes to sleep the 10 year old goes and tries to suffocate the 2 year old or goes and starts setting fires. These kids don't just need a spanking. They need time reversed to when they were born and then they need to be brought up in a structured, safe and nurturing environment

Society has not removed parents right to discipline children with painful methods. That notion is totally incorrect and lacks any basis in fact. Ask any LEO's on this forum if they have ever arrested and jailed a parent for spanking their child whether in home or in public.

Incorrect.

You may not have witnessed or been party to situations where parents are hauled away by police for disciplining their children near other adults who get offended at the thought. It certainly exists.

I personally have witnessed two instances of fanny paddling result in police arriving and taking the parents and child away, due to other people in the vicinity feigning shock and horror at daring to touch the children. (And I don't get out much, in the sense of being around children frequently.) I witnessed the entire encounter and heard the exchange with police. I can vouch for the fact the discipline was mild and nowhere near enough to warrant police being called in any state of this country. The children in each instance bloody deserved it, and what was delivered merely was enough to get their attention ... not hardly enough to harm them physically or emotionally.

Whomever called the police for intervention (in these two cases I witnessed) was grossly unjustified, IMO, and sticking their busy-body noses where they didn't belong. I can only assume they lied through their teeth to get the police to actually lay a finger on the parents and children. In both instances, the police were arrested and everyone was hauled away. In both instances, numerous adults behind were left in disbelief that we'd just witnessed what had occurred. The ensuing discussions made it clear: my opinion of what I had seen was spot on. I hadn't been mistaken. The swatting was justified; the call to police was not; the arrests were apparently unwarranted, based on the evidence we'd all heard and witnessed.

As for the people who had called police, I can only assume they had never been physically disciplined in their lives and had no basis for understanding what constituted legitimate discipline and the reasonable levels of force/strength to be used. That was their problem, but they soon made it the problem of the otherwise upstanding parents who dared stand tall enough to discipline their children, daring to do it in public in spite of knowing such busy-body intruders existed in the community.

Point is: disciplining children can be seen by other soft/fragile/offended types as physical abuse when it's nothing of the sort, and the mere CLAIM of a thing becomes truth in the eyes of police sufficient to justify arrest. We all know this to be fact: that claims and accusations are presumed to be the truth in advance of knowing the facts, in many instances. It seems to be the "new" morality, our justification to ourselves that intervention is an upstanding act in such cases. In reality, some children need physical discipline, some more than others at times. For garden-variety situations, calling police is a crime and a false claim of need.

There are at least a dozen prior discussions, here, on the lunacy of failure to take personal responsibility for one's children. In a number of them, I can recall the children simply needing discipline the parents seemingly failed to see as being required. That's their choice. But swatting a few of the kids into attention and removing the privileged activity from them would have gone a long way to helping them reach adulthood on their own two feet.

Schools used to have corporal punishment as part of their regimen for keeping children on the straight and narrow. This was only a few decades ago, within my lifetime. Now, God help the teacher or principal who dares lay a finger on little Johnnie. Careers are destroyed by the ensuing claims, in such cases ... and Johnnie continues to learn that this "button" can be pressed to destroy the upstanding parents around them who dare to think they'll try their hand at discipline.

None of this can be a surprise, can it???

It's how things work in many places around the country. It's lunacy in action, to be sure. It's ridiculous to assume that claims mean a damn thing, much of the time, and that the mere laying of a finger on a child is going to brand them for life.

God knows where it came from, but it's a collision of busy-body, do-good desire with lack of personal responsibility and chutzpah on the part of parents, which combine with a zero-tolerance philosophy in regards to "touching" children. Doesn't matter if discipline is involved, in such places where this lunacy exists.

Perceptive children can (and do) milk this sort of situation, via leveraging the adults around them to do extraordinary things. Even to the point of getting adults to level false accusations and claims against the parents. It gets the swatting to stop, and it's as sure a way to deliver a bit of pain on the parents' heads as is possible for a child to arrange. Happens reasonably often, so far as I've seen.

Anyway. It does exist. Perhaps not nearby each of us. But, it does.

It should be rare. It's not. An extraordinary lack of personal responsibility for one's children has collided with a zero-tolerance, busy-body philosophy in many communities, to the detriment of the children (IMO). It won't disappear until we all do one thing: take personal responsibility for our actions. That includes seeing busy-body, do-good false claims for what they are, and allowing parents to "parent" again, instead of calling them criminals for daring to do it.

I am child free by choice.

Glad everyone doesn't feel like you do about having kids or civilization would end after one generation.

Implying it's dishonorable, somehow, to take this path. Hm.

With 2B other adults doing their utmost to continue to populate the world, there's little chance of even a few hundred million adults choosing not to be parents causing anything so fearfully catastrophic as collapse of humanity within one generation. Wouldn't happen if it were ordered. Won't happen simply because some folks choose to not spawn children. There are any number of reasons not to. Just as many hundreds of millions of adults find reasons to do so. Freedom of choice, which in the larger scheme of things helps it all go 'round. Be glad of it.

I am child free by choice. First and foremost I can't stand kids, second because society has removed the parents right/duty/ability to apply pain reinforced discipline (it is well documented and proven to be an effective training tool).

Now I was also beaten regularly as a child growing up, and I turned out OK. Never got a whippin' I did not earn.

Many a time when I am out in public (shopping, dining) I have so wanted a taser to zap some problem child throwing a tantrum or being feral (while the parent is clearly oblivious to the activities).

I say a HUGE +1 to the officer.

Great, stay child free, for their sake. What is pain reinforced dicipline, is that your dog in your avatar and is that how you train your dog, go ahead I dare you. Please provide your documentation to being an effective training tool, and does this apply to kids only or can I apply your interventions on adults. Behavior problems is my specialty, many years of experience to know YOU ARE WRONG.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The mayor of a small Arkansas town says the police officer who used a stun gun on an unruly 10-year-old girl has been fired for violating department policy — not for using the Taser but for failing to use the camera attached to it.

According to a police report, Bradshaw used the Taser on the girl on Nov. 11 after receiving a call about a domestic disturbance. The report says the girl's mother gave Bradshaw permission to use the stun gun if needed.

A phone number for Bradshaw couldn't immediately be found Monday. The mayor says Bradshaw will still receive unpaid vacation and holiday time.

That is a rather long post, so I am not going to go over all the point.

As far as the police being called for the incident that you witnessed where the child was spanked or whatever and it seems appropriate, did you offer a witness statement to the police and let them know that it was not abusive behavior?

As far as corporal punishment in schools. Each year at the start of the school year I check off the box to allow the school to discipline my child this way if necessary. The only thing they must do is call me first. This my not occur nation wide, but the local school boards do set the standards for the district. The voters elect the school board. It is a direct reflection of the community at large.

As far as children working the system, the only reason they would attempt to is that they know the consequences won't be severe because there isn't a history of it previously in their homes.

Just remember that shot placement is much more important with what you carry than how big a bang you get with each trigger pull.www.ddchl.com
Texas CHL Instructor
Texas Hunter Education Instructor
NRA Instructor

As far as the police being called for the incident that you witnessed where the child was spanked or whatever and it seems appropriate, did you offer a witness statement to the police and let them know that it was not abusive behavior?

No. Offered to, but when it diverged from "the truth" then they made it plain to me that my input wasn't wanted. They demanded I move on and stop disrupting their work.

Had much the same response from police in a traffic crash I witnessed, in which I made a statement to an officer in support of the poor yutz who was blinded by the sunlight at the same curve I was. The officer didn't want to hear it, as it would mean more paperwork, would make his signed/sealed/delivered claim of negligent driving a bit messy. He sent me packing and would not speak to me, after he heard the gist of my statement.

Unsurprising, the skewing of info that gets into the "official" record. Criminal, when it matters and would materially alter "the truth" that gets recorded. Truly criminal, when it involves children. Yet, it's by design, apparently. The system wants it no other way.

We're falling off a cliff, and few in the system seem to care. Just another instance of exactly that.

Tasing kids is wrong

Originally Posted by Landor

What is really scary is there are people in here, fathers even that have no problem with this kid being tased so I assume they would have no problem with their kids being tased. What goes through an 11 year old's head when a officer wants to cuff them or take them away. Was the kid resisting arrest? Can a 11 year old even resist arrest? Do they understand or are they just so scared they just don't want to be taken away.

Look, I don't know what happened with this girl but what ever it was it seems to me that unless this 11 year old killed someone this situation was more then likely not handled right.

I completely agree. What is this country coming to when someone tases a child. It makes no difference if its a leo or not. Anyone tasing a child of 11 years old needs to be stopped by whatever means required.